Truly, my lack of discipline is embarrassing and I promise you I am appropriately ashamed of myself.

I’m curious about the scorn people seem to have for ‘bloggers’ right now. Oh, I’m sure it’s always been there, but it seems to be the soup du jour. Not all people who blog are pompous pricks, though I will admit that I almost said ‘I find myself curious’ which is like a guaranteed ticket to douchebaggery. Anyway, I want to blame it on Myspace because Rupert Murdoch owns it and because I’m harboring blanket hate for teenagers today, but I can’t even do that because I genuinely don’t understand what’s wrong with people writing. Good, bad, about Sarah Jessica Parker’s missing mole or Barack Obama getting rid of nukes, it’s still an intellectual pursuit at heart and I can’t help but think that can’t be anything but a positive thing. Especially for those Myspace teenagers.

As parents – as a nation – we are so focused on the physical health and fitness of the upcoming generations that I am a little nervous we aren’t focusing enough on their tiny little developing brains. Being athletic and eating your veggies is important and all, but to me it seems like being a little overweight would be preferable to being an idiot. I’m not talking about just uneducated, because you can be plenty smart without a degree or diploma, I’m talking dumb as a stack of bricks because no one could be bothered to instill the importance of knowledge in between playdates and soccer practice.

I’m overreacting and I know it, and I know that when I was 15 I had stupid conversations and did stupid things, but I was pursuing experience because I knew experience begets knowledge and knowledge is the secret to world domination. That’s definitely one secret I’ll share with my kid.

Even after I moved out here, for the first few years in the old house on 17th South, my routine didn’t change much except I no longer worked on Sundays. It was still cereal and the Sunday sales ads. It’s a habit I picked up from my parents, who for as long as I can remember spent their average Sundays in the same way, except coffee instead of cereal. But it was always the Sunday paper.

My life today still includes the Sunday paper – I read the sales ads, and Warren reads the paper itself and the New York Times, but the difference is the talking heads are always on in the background. Warren has a pattern established, his own routine, that while he reads the paper he points the kitchen TiVo* to Face The Nation with Bob Schieffer, This Week with George Stephanopoulos, The Chris Matthews Show, and his personal favorite, Meet the Press with Tim Russert.

I don’t personally care for any of them, and it would be hypocritical and stupid for me to pretend that I feel a personal grief for the passing of Tim Russert earlier this week. I don’t, however, want to minimize his contributions to both journalism and politics by that statement. Warren was immensely respectful of Tim Russert and he was far and away his favorite of the Sunday morning political hosts, and so it’s for him that I mention the much too early death of Tim Russert, and that in this household in particular, he will be missed.

*i love you, tivo